Live To Dream Big!

It's a sad statistic, but 85% of American employees are unhappy with their job. We are all encouraged to go to college after high school, get good grades, and then go out there and get a good job. However, even those people that do all those things don't even end up with a 'good job.' Why does that happen? How come we don't live the life we planned or imagined?

Most people would say that life is not easy, but I would like to portray it differently. Life is easy just as much as it's not easy.

What I mean by that is there is a path to the lifestyle that you've always imagined, but we somewhere along the path we chose to go off course and now we cannot find our way back on or we have given up. So why did we choose to stray off the path? Most of us have an excuse or we place blame on something or someone. We refuse to take responsibility for our actions. Regardless of how you think about it, everything that has happened in your life, you are 100% responsible for it. The definition of responsibility is the source or cause of why something happens or doesn't happen. It's your ability to respond. Hence, you are on the path that you are on now, because of your ability to respond to life. The great thing about that, though, is you can become more wise in your ability to respond, where if you put the blame on someone or something, that power is taken away from you, and you are not able to change your circumstances. So now the question is, are you willing to accept responsibility for what is happening in your life? (If you want more, I would say, "Yes!")

I know it may be tough for you to accept, but it is life-changing once you do. Because now you have the power to change your life by increasing your ability to respond to circumstances that come up during your life. You may think that it's hard, but it's not. What's hard, is not living the way you wanted to live. What's hard, is wondering why you are experiencing what you are experiencing right now. What's hard, is not knowing what's in store for your future. Accepting what is comfortable because everyone else did and losing your dream is hard.

So how do you increase your ability to respond, so that you can find your way back to the path to the lifestyle you've always imagined? The great thing about it is that it doesn't matter how old or how young you are, it's still possible to get to your dreams. Five years can change everything. There are four main things that my mentors taught that you must do to begin your lifestyle change.

• Write down all of your dreams. What is it that you really want out of life? A better thing would be to get pictures of everything and post them on a poster board. It's called a dream board. Put this somewhere you can view it every single day. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve," says Ralph Waldo Emerson. Once you start seeing it every day, you really start believing that it is attainable. Think & Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, is a great book that teaches how powerful your subconscious mind can be.

• However, the only way your mind can conceive that your dreams are attainable is to change your philosophy. It's your philosophy that's giving you what you are currently getting. Your philosophy determines your activity. Your activity determines your results. Your results determine your lifestyle. Jim Rohn said in his audio, "The Art of Exceptional Living," "Work harder on yourself than you do on your job." Abe Lincoln stated if he had four hours to chop down a tree, he would spend 3 hours sharpening his ax. There's no use in spending your time whacking away at a tree you're trying to chop down with a dull ax. Same thing here. If you've always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got. In order for things to change, you have to change. One of the main things you can do right now is start start your library. Personal development will create the philosophy you need to bring you to your desires. Read some good books. I've already mentioned a couple to you.

• Another step that must be done to help change your philosophy is to analyze your environment. Who are you hanging around with? Studies show that you are the average of the 5 people you hang around with the most. So if you're hanging out with 4 broke people, you're bound to be the 5th. It's your environment that helps develop your current philosophy. If you need help with something, who are the people you go to? Who do you listen to for advice or support? If you buy some one's opinion, you buy their lifestyle. Is their lifestyle the lifestyle you want? If you can't change the people around you, then you have to change the people around you. Now I'm not saying to let go of your spouse or your family if they are all negative. But you can develop more relationships with people that can add to your philosophy, therefore making the average of your network on the upper end.

• The last thing to help you achieve success is to analyze your current lifestyle and decide what you are willing to sacrifice. Some things that you are doing right now may not be bad, but are not helping you either. Whether it be watching TV or hobbies or whatever it may be that you can sacrifice so you can implement these simple principles in to your busy schedule. I know it may be hard at first, but I promise, once you have your Dream Board, working on your new philosophy and environment, you will become more willing to sacrifice the little things in life to achieve the big things you desire.

Now all these things are easy to do as I stated. Easy, meaning something everyone can do. But this also makes it easy not to do. This is your choice. If your job told you to do these things, you would do them, but it amazes me how many of you will read this blog telling you that you can everything you want in the world by applying these simple principles, and you won't do them. It doesn't make sense, but that's what will happen. Will you still encounter some roadblocks? Will you still encounter obstacles that you have to overcome even if you apply these principles? Of course. However, with your new philosophy, those obstacles will become a lot easier to overcome and you can endure more situations that would have put you off the path before. You don't have to be part of the '85% crowd' forever. If you have the ability to read this blog, you still have the opportunity to take full advantage of life, and really go after it!

It's not the size of your dreams that determines whether or not they come true, but the size of the actions you take that imply their inevitable arrival.

Live To Dream Big!

James Jackson, III
www.attainlifestyle.com